Tata 1 L car to be unveiled on 10th Jan 2008. EDIT : Named Tata NANO

This is a discussion on Tata 1 L car to be unveiled on 10th Jan 2008. EDIT : Named Tata NANO within The Indian Car Scene, part of the BHP India category; At least Anand Mahindra has accepted that it is a moment of history without being sceptic or sarcastic. A good ...

Tata said, "I observed families riding on two-wheelers -- the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family."

Henry Ford made the first car( i guess.. im not sure).
Ratan Tata & Co mad the peoples car. They have brought mobility to the masses. indeed commendable and a tremendous achievement in history.
The BHARAT RATNA for this man > SIR RATAN TATA. The one and only.

For a price difference of less than Rs.20,000 compared with the cheapest Bajaj Auto RE 2S. Nano looks like a steal.

I sincerely hope this is the end of the autorickshaw. A great achievement by TATA. Just heard in news that it has 21% more interior space than the M800. This is a truly incredible achievement by TATA. Following tradition, they have set the benchmark for the Indian auto industry.

Honestly I was completely pessimistic about this - 1 lac car ?? Now ,I salute Ratan Tata [and also abraham and team ]for this great achievement , he had made every Indian proud. Man I am looking forward to TD this ..

saw the Nano today. First impression was that this car actually should cost more than one lakh. Outside Fit finish was good to decent. Insides were basic - I wont get into that since other have written about it. A couple of things that I noticed - single long wiper as was predicted; one side-view mirror on the driver's side only; 12 inch wheel rims; exhaust mimics the center intrument cluster by sticking out of the center of the rear bumper.
On the price - here is what Tata said. The basic car will cost 1L minus VAT and transportation cost. The 1L includes all other taxes. It should therefore be cheapest in Singur, WB for which transportation cost should be the least.

I was closely watching the countdown of the unveiling ceremony at 11.30am, it was giving me the same pleasure of witnessing the First official presentation of the Airbus A380, at Toulouse, France on 18th January 2005.

I think everyone is forgetting the media for making this happen. Ratan Tata had no dreams of making a 1 lak car in India as a matter of fact. It was just a passing interaction with the media-people which brought out a comment from him "a car can be made even with 1 lak cost". Next day news papers and print media shocked Tata himself claiming that " Tata is going to make a car worth Rs.1 lak". Although it shocked him, he took it as a challenge and 4 years on the run we have the unveiling. Inspite of the raw material price hikes many times in this period, he is keeping his "1 lak" keyword as a promise. Its a great feeling to be an indian with lot of hard working men making their names to the top of the world.

I dont mind having few 'Nano's instead of driving a big car without any parking space nor a chance to hit above 50 kmph at any given time, exclusively as a citybird for our daily needs.

May not necessarily be so. For multiple reasons. One there is already a sizeable mass of autorickshaws running on the roads. Most of these are owned by people who rent these out to the poor chaps who come from villages to earn a living. These owners will never see any major benefit in switching over to this car thereby investing money all over again. There is no such compelling factor for them to do so. Also, the poor chaps who drive these autos mostly hold 3-wheeler licenses. They are not going to go en-masse and apply for a 4-wheeler license all of a sudden.

Also, autos are 3-wheelers and issued permits separately. Whereas 4-wheeled vehicles and quadri-cycles will have to apply for in-city taxi permit. Again, getting permits, whether for 3-wheelers or 4-wheelers is a tough job. People won't give up 3-wheeler permits to switch sides.

Moreover practically speaking you can not use a car with 4-doors to ferry people the way the all sides open autos do. That ways an autorick is always much more flexible and 'configurable' as per need.

So is the idea a non-starter then? May be not. However if that happens it will be a gradual shift rather than a tectonic move. It may happen that over a period of couple of years if the car proves rugged and low maintenance we will see a new breed of taxis plying on the road with a new set of drivers. And then if these start becoming popular with the public may be the autos on the roads will start diminishing.

But there is no case to write an obituary to the autos immediately. They will still bug us for some more years to come, at the very least.

Now that is one thought provoking idea. However a car's roof also adds to the rigidity and strength of the whole shell. So if you do not want a roof the design has to be different so that the stress points in the body shell are moved elsewhere in such a way as to be independent from the dependency on the roof to bear some load. Else unnecessary chassis flexing and such problems may start showing up that may add to bigger problems. So it is possible that Tatas probably did think about it and then rejected it as it would have added to the cost of the car... maybe they did...